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User blog:CuteLunaMoon/Chapter 12: The devil within
" No reason for greaving" I exclaim. " Her death wasn't my fault. Soon, I'll wake from this terrible dream." Though I say these words, I still feel the heaviness in my heart. I feel my sweat running through my back and my breath is heavy. Yesterday I had a nightmare. I saw that beast girl again in my dream, killed stone dead. It has been days since I witnessed such altrocity, and that nightmarish scenery has been haunting me ever since. I dress myself up and lit the chimney. I check my stash and sigh. Some of my smoked rats have gone rancid, due to lacking fire during their processing. I heat up the fat, which was processed from rat fat, throw in the pan some chop parsley and cornmeal and make a bland soup. I try to eat but the haunting image of a skinned beast patient in the shimmering dirty pot of the blood-drunk hunters appear again and makes me nauseous. I put the dish down and step outside. The termite-eaten stairs creak as I descend. for the past five days, every time I think of the madness around me, all I could do was to drag more brick and wood scrap back and reinforced my fence, now is a high wall. Deep down inside, I know that I can close my eyes to what I don't want to see, but I cannot close my heart to what I don't want to feel. I feel powerless against the irrational fear that has crept into my heart. As the nightmare got worse, the only way out, perhaps, is to fulfil what was promised. I think as I walk silently in the cover dead trees in the deserted streets of gaping roofs and leaning houses toward the ruined village in the outskirt. I stop here and there in hope of finding a pack of the rat but no luck today. I find a small marshy bog that has bearberries growing wild all over, dotted with some islets of higher and dryer scrub-grown land. I happily fill all of my pockets with the berries which I can dry up for later use or make into jam, if I ever found some molasses or honey. When I pass the fountain, I hear a song, more like a lullaby and spot a skinny woman in a torn, ragged and charred Black Church Doctor attire and a Church Pick on her back. She holds a wrapped baby in her hand and sings a cradle song for the child with unknown lyrics. She has an air of befuddled unworldliness as her words aren't completely human. When she turns towards my hiding spot, I am shocked to see that her child is a baby beast which is long dead and reduced to a dry husk of skin and bones. Its skin shows visible signs of burn as well. At first, the woman does not seem to perceive the death of her child and sometimes stops to merrily cuddle it. She suckles the dead infant. But, a minute later, she screams in terror " My baby! No! My baby! Don't burn my baby! Please! God, no! Please no!" I watch as the poor, mad woman rolls on the grass-grown streets like she is on fire while still tries to shield her child from the unseen flame veil. And then, she stops, stands up, and murmurs her lullaby again and sometimes suckles her kid, as if they are still living in the waking world. I tiptoe close enough to drop half of my berries on a clean, big round marble in her sight and quickly retreat back to my hiding spot. Hearing the sound, she looks and finds the berries and hungrily eats them. Sometimes, she chews the berries carefully in her mouth and bows down to feed it to her dead child. Satisfied by what I have done, I quietly walk out and resume my short trip. But as soon as the happy pass, sadness creeps into my heart as I think of her hopeless future. When I'm near the outskirt, I lean toward the mouldy wall as I catch a glimpse of a thin shambling figure moving in the over-grown bushes. I take pit my monocular and see a pale maiden, younger than me, with watery blue eyes. The maiden is a huntress, evidenced by her way of clothing. She dons a bloody, torn, Hunter Set. She does not carry any trick weapons at all, and by the way she moves and the battered clothing she wears, I can tell the maiden is wounded. In the Hunter's Nightmare, it's not wise to help out to others. I have witnessed many treacheries within the past five days. Once, when I saw a blood-drunk hunter struck down one of his companions from behind when the two was chased by a Blood-starved Beast. And in another time, I saw an Eye Collector push one of her fellows down to the river of blood to steal the latter bag of eyes. When I'm recalling the past events, the huntress falls to the ground. I leave my hiding spot and hurry to her location. I find the poor girl in a muddle of dry leaves and debris, her eyes shut tight and she lets out faint groans. She is wounded in the left hand but the wound doesn't seem to be severe. I ask her but she does not answer but continue to moan. I raise her left hand up to inspect her wound. A cut from a dagger, not really deep. Perhaps the poor girl lost too much blood. I inspect her fine nose and rosy cheeks. She has the look of a rookie hunter, I wonder how she ends up here. I take out a Blood Vial from my backpack and the syringe and give her a heavy dose of blood. Her wound seems to heal and she opens her round eyes. " Thank you, kind hunter. You save my life." She stammers. " Think nothing of it. You don't seem to be very blood-drunk. How did you end up here?" I ask her. " Long story." Her voice seems to be a little less worry when she looks into my eyes as I remove the iron helm. Her name is Lizzie, and she tells me that she and her father came to Yharnam two weeks ago to seek a cure for her disease. And she worked for the Healing Church as a hunter as her payment. She said the Church had replaced many of their hunters with fresh recruits and she was amongst the new faces. Her father worked in burial service for the church. I ask her about the Green Willow but she replies that she never heard of it. The Healing Church must have covered all trace of the massacre in the Cathedral Ward, I think. I offer her a meal with me and to which, she happily accepts. I find a secluded area amidst the ruins of the church of Good Chalice and we have lunch there with some ash cakes, bearberries, and the rest of my smoked rat that is still good to eat. I am very happy since I haven't talked to anyone sane within a week long. During the meal, she asks me about the nightmarish realm we are stuck in and I ask her about the waking world when I was absent as well as her life. Her story doesn't completely add up but I think retaining sanity in amidst this chaotic, unfathomed, inconceivable abnormality is already hard enough. She tells me that she and her father were caught by some invisible force while she was helping her father to transfer dead bodies near Oedon Chapel. When they wake up, they were here. That is really strange and most likely uncanny. But she seems to be honest. She notices one of my earings and asks my story. I briefly tell her what happened to me, save for the Fishing Hamlet part and my uncanny fall. When I ask her about her father, tears swell up in her eyes and she tells me that he was stuck within a rift within Cathedral Ward and need help. I agree to follow the girl to rescue her father. We furtively traversing the decrepit street of Central Yharnam, and through the malodorous river of blood to Cathedral Ward. When we reach a block of fairly well-preserved brick houses near flower garden, Lizza signals me to stop. I have noticed that her behaviours have become somewhat struggling the closer we get to the ward. " Luna..." She says, with a tear roll on her left rosy cheek " you are the and kindest sanest person I've met in this terrible nightmare, turn back now" I am quite surprised by her sudden change and about to ask but she hastily says " Quick, turn back now. Before they see you" " They? Who? Are we not going to rescue your father?" I ask in the confusion. " Go now!" She hurries me while worriedly gazing over the tall, shadow-blighted houses. " This is a trap!" " Well, well, well... Let's see what little Lizzie bring back to us." Says a distorted voice. From a loathsomely dark window, a blood-drunk hunter in Old Hunter attire steps out, followed by two more. I am terrified and turn to Lizzie, who is now crying. " I'm so, so sorry Luna. They have my father. They told me they would kill my father unless I baited you here. They said you killed two of their men." She stammers and runs away. I quickly turn back but the gang of hunters that I saw ravishing the beast girl shows up and stand in the way. The ambushers slowly close from both sides. Obviously, there are more of them and I can't hold them off on my own. I dash to the ruined building to the right, which shows least sight of being inhabited. Luckily, the door before me is unlocked and actually slightly ajar. Once inside, I barricade the door with a chair just before I hear the violent battering on it. I run to the back of the house but there is no other way out so I ascend to the second floor. The front door sprang open. From the second floor, I quickly empty a fat jar I bring along on the stair and try the doors in the balcony. Sheer fortunate chance gives me my reprieve—for the next door is also unlocked. Just after I slip in, I hear frightful scurrying on the first floor and sound of running men on the staircase. Then, some of the pursuers must have slips on the fat spill I left on the stair because I hear rumbles and curses as well as yelling and the sound of broken wood. I quickly survey the room I'm in. It's an old bedroom with two windows and everything is covered with a layer of dust. Wasting no time, I pull the bedstead, to the door and then push it against the door. Just after I finish the makeshift barricade, the sound of my pursuers grows louder and soon, the door shakes violently and the weak panelling begins to splinter. I look out horrified that there are no rooftops nearby and if I take the jump, I would maim myself. The only option I have left is to face the blood-drunk hunters. I take out the slug named 'A Call Beyond' hold it over my head. Before my eyes, the vast stretch of the dark sky appear and with it, the cosmos and the stars. Cold shivers down my spine. When the door finally collapses, the pursuers flood in but is surprised by an immense powerful shockwave coming from hundreds of piercing beam. The shockwave is devastating the rotten floor cannot withstand such force, it crumbles and collapses right under my feet. The following aftershock almost destroys half of the building and I am caught in the house destruction. Debris and broken furniture fall on me and I can I only shield my eyes. Then I feel extremely painful on my belly and I feel the blood bleeding wet. When the crashing of the house stop. I squint and see that I have been impaled by a large wooden stick. I feel so cold and then, everything turns black. Then I see myself under the sea. I'm surrounded by columns of monolith structures covered by barnacles and seaweed. I, apparently, do not breath as there are no bubbles coming from my nose. But I look in terror that there is no nose at all in front of me but rather something that covered in white scales and wrinkles, resembles tree bark. I look down and see that my fingers have become long and scaly tendrils like I have seen in the nightmare before. My head is covered in leaves and some flowers, similar to the flower in the garden underneath the Astral Clocktower. The surrounding is dark and the monoliths form a hallway lead to something deeper and darker. I feel a sudden shudder when I look into the inconceivable darkness below. But what makes me terrified isn't the darkness but the preposterous urge I feel to dive into the depth. I recount one of the stories I heard from Louis long, long ago about the bottomless sea and what lurked below. Though his story was a collection of incomplete hints of impossible marvels and horrors beyond the bounds of possibility that the mad sailors claimed to have witnessed, it still makes me fear. In the diary of Sophia, there were depictions of difficult, abstruse, theory-driven contemporary art and urban legend of a sunken realm and the madness beneath the tide, which also stemmed from the tall stories of the seamen. Were that they were on sea for too long or it was just their own wild, maddening fancy? After all, the strangest and maddest of myths are often based on truth. I soon give in to my unthinkable suggestion and descend into the murky water. It's dark and cold, but far, far below I see light. It guides me to the bottom. There, lies a large, prodigiously luminous fish. And as I look at the creature, a freezing cold sweep through my body while an igniting pain burns into my brain a momentary conception of nightmare and extreme chaos. Before my eyes lies the creature I saw in my mother funeral which replaced my deceased mother. I immediately recall one of the stories I read from Sophia's diary most recently, about the last head of the School of Mensis, Micolash. She wrote that he was trying to make contact with an accient Great One, by the name Kos, or some say Kosm. I don't know how or why but I immediately chant "Mother Kos. have mercy for your poor children. Grant me eyes, grant me eyes. Grant eyes into my brain to cure my beastly idiocy." Then I hear the sound of water dripping, louder and louder, and the strange 'Milkweed' symbol appears again, burning into my very thoughts. Then I hear a thunder calling from the distant depth. An uttering, inconceivable calling yet somehow so familiar as if I have known it for a thousand lives. Then before my eyes, I see the fight between me and the mad Choir from afar, in which my body collapses and he ravishes my motionless body in the tidal pool. But then, things turn black and the fight repeat itself, only I see myself die a different way. And it repeats and repeats until I find myself victorious and the mad Choir lies on the ground with a throat cut open. Then I see my body falls from the Clocktower and drops to the ground like ripe fruit and the vicious birds descend to feast on me. Then, my vision blur and I see me standing up, seemingly not understand the situation. " You... you saved me all the time" I stammer and look down to Kos, the merciful mother, which is now vanished. " Wait for me, mother!" I shout aloud " Let us sit about and chat into the wee hours of... salvation and the meaning of the dreams." Yes. I realize. My life was all a lie. I died many times before and woke up as if nothing had happened. Of course, with the help of mother Kos. She must have taken me into the care of other children, enlightened and nourished by her in the Hamlet. But the mad Choir and his church hunters were covered in my blood so they were brought along too. And I was unknowingly tasked with cleaning the hamlet of the blasphemous church members. Most likely. I imagine myself swimming in the reef in the open sea and dwell amidst the glory, the vast knowledge of the cosmos, and the righteous just of the merciful Great One forever. But, then, I think of the Beast girl and Lizzie and decide to wake up. The beast girl died so violently she could never pass onto anotehr plane of exsistence and trapped in this nightmare. Category:Blog posts